Thank you. I certainly tried to be a good influence and to encourage good volunteers like you to keep at it through the frustrating parts.
Trying to pick someone is very difficult for me, in part because some of the people who had a lot of influence on me didn't necessarily do so in positive ways.
I'm not sure I can pick any one person who had the most influence on me because there were several people who had important influence, and my influences were far more a lot of moderate-sized influences. So, my answer would change from time to time.
But tonight, I think I'll say Tribelessnomad. Tribelessnomad did a few really important things. First of all, he created HelpScreening. Part of what was important about that was showing me an example of how to get things done that I would later follow. Getting a journal made into an official journal is really hard. So is getting a consensus about getting anything done. He made HelpScreening by being convinced that it needed to be made and then just making it. HelpScreening was vitally important as there was no way for new volunteers to get feedback before it (there were some things you could try, but no actual system or approved method) or even a way to ask questions.
He also immediately handed it over to me to run, which helped to put me into a really good position to help others. He did a great deal of userdoc work and he maintained lj_support. He stepped down over disagreements and frustrations over how documentation was handled, and he handed lj_support over to me. He was very encouraging and supportive of what I was doing in Support from very early on. And he gave me some basic guidelines for running lj_support. I think his early support and encouragement made me feel much more comfortable while I was basically carving new paths in Support and affecting a lot of people and hoping I was doing so for the best. Not everyone liked or agreed with the changes that were happening in Support, but having a few people who really seemed competent and good being supportive of them (not just Tribelessnomad, but I'm only supposed to list one person here) really did help.
There were a lot of really good volunteers before I was around, and most of the volunteers I know weren't around them. I worry that their contributions will be forgotten, although I'm sure there are people who remember them, especially those from before my time. But I do think it's good to recognize that many, many people contributed vastly to LiveJournal. There are eras where it's hard to imagine Support without a particular volunteer or two, but no volunteer was always there, and every era of Support has had its amazing volunteers.
Trying to pick someone is very difficult for me, in part because some of the people who had a lot of influence on me didn't necessarily do so in positive ways.
I'm not sure I can pick any one person who had the most influence on me because there were several people who had important influence, and my influences were far more a lot of moderate-sized influences. So, my answer would change from time to time.
But tonight, I think I'll say Tribelessnomad. Tribelessnomad did a few really important things. First of all, he created HelpScreening. Part of what was important about that was showing me an example of how to get things done that I would later follow. Getting a journal made into an official journal is really hard. So is getting a consensus about getting anything done. He made HelpScreening by being convinced that it needed to be made and then just making it. HelpScreening was vitally important as there was no way for new volunteers to get feedback before it (there were some things you could try, but no actual system or approved method) or even a way to ask questions.
He also immediately handed it over to me to run, which helped to put me into a really good position to help others. He did a great deal of userdoc work and he maintained lj_support. He stepped down over disagreements and frustrations over how documentation was handled, and he handed lj_support over to me. He was very encouraging and supportive of what I was doing in Support from very early on. And he gave me some basic guidelines for running lj_support. I think his early support and encouragement made me feel much more comfortable while I was basically carving new paths in Support and affecting a lot of people and hoping I was doing so for the best. Not everyone liked or agreed with the changes that were happening in Support, but having a few people who really seemed competent and good being supportive of them (not just Tribelessnomad, but I'm only supposed to list one person here) really did help.
There were a lot of really good volunteers before I was around, and most of the volunteers I know weren't around them. I worry that their contributions will be forgotten, although I'm sure there are people who remember them, especially those from before my time. But I do think it's good to recognize that many, many people contributed vastly to LiveJournal. There are eras where it's hard to imagine Support without a particular volunteer or two, but no volunteer was always there, and every era of Support has had its amazing volunteers.
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